This is the weekend, the last weekend in March, when not one movie but two movies finally huffed over the $100 million mark. Congratulations, “Rango,” now at $105 million. You, too, “Just Go With It,” now at $100 million. Nice try, “Green Hornet,” stuck at $97 million. On the plus side, you have the largest worldwide gross of any 2011 movie: $227 million.

These three movies, by the way, are also the three movies that opened in the most theaters this year.

Let's look at that, shall we? Thus far in 2011, we have 12 movies that have opened in more than 3,000 theaters. Here they are: sorted by domestic gross, and including top critics/Rotten Tomatoes score. Think of them as the movies Hollywood thinks we want to watch :

Basically one decent movie out of 12. In baseball, that's an .083 batting average, which is the kind of average that gets you canned. But in baseball, you're still judged more on the quality of play than the number of asses in the seats.

It's nice to see that the one “hit” is also the one hit. The best-reviewed, “Rango,” is the most-watched. Meanwhile, crap movies for boys can do well (“Green Hornet,” “Just Go With It”) but crap movies for girls tend to die quickly (“Red Riding Hood”). Why Hollywood focuses on the boys.

COMMENTS

Is making $100 million their criteria for “decent”? How much did it cost them to make those movies and put them into the 3000 theaters? I would guess they still made money on most of those, so maybe they're feeling OK about their batting average?